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Poetry Interpretation of “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord George Gordon Byron

Most works of classical poetry have intense use of spiritual imagery which blended with the picturesque adoration of women in the Elizabethan and Victorian England. In>“She Walks in Beauty” Byron has never spared its use either in describing the physical beautify of the maid. Moreover, the concept of feminine beauty is not spared the association with certain spiritual endowments and potency. Byron mentions, “A mind at peace with all below” in a manner to exalt the personality to some level of deities above and not of ordinary dwelling (Byron -17). Beside virtue, beauty is compared to spiritual reverence because feminism was in that time and culture associated with considerable evil and sedition.

The melodrama in the Byron’s prose is intensely poignant in the poem. There is alliteration in the line “Of cloudless climes and starry skies>”. Part of the style here is used to not only bring about rhyme, but the classical poetry demanded a taste of melodramatic effect which served a broad spectrum of needs at the time. Most poetry was performed to the royalties and who demanded a taste of expressive embodiment that would elicit entertainment during the performance of poetry. Despite the notion that Byron used to poem to express his love for art in general, the poem is not short of feminist approvals and occasional reverence and worship, which was the epitome of the Victorian culture. Her angelic look not only talks about physical beauty but also compares it to the more sublime religious attributes of piousness.

When Byron depicts the persona’s “nameless grace”, it is not only her beauty depicted, but a set of contradictory, opaque and abstract impressions are cast on her caricature of spiritual imagery which the poet has developed through vivid description from the beginning of the poem. The climax of the poem is thus reached in subtle protest of the unfathomable and bewildering serenity of the quality of her beauty, as awe inspiring and yet a “pure, and dear dwelling-place”. The poem is rife with rhyme which contributes immensely to its grand position is literature as a Lord Byron’s masterpiece and epic of Victorian literature.

A special place among the lyric of London period of Lord Byron is occupied by “The Hebrew Melodies” (1815). Byron worked on them in the second half of 1814 and early 1815. They were conceived as the words for songs that were to be composed and executed by young composers Nathan and Bram. Poems and notes had been issued in April 1815, and the second part – in 1816. The name of this cycle is not entirely consistent with its content. Thus, the collection includes three love songs, free of any eastern theme and one of them is “She Walks in Beauty”.

Byron himself wrote in his diary that “he could not write without personal experience”. In these verses, there is no external environment or external facts; the concrete is drawn into lyrical experience itself. Again, one cannot fail to point out poetic realism in this particular poem because Byron not only describes an isolated experience but, he manages to take the audience along with him in the encounter through vivid imagery. The readers have the possibility to understand who the poet was, what he felt for the heroines, and what they meant to him for the purpose of fully comprehending the poem. That is why “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord George Gordon Byron is one of the best lyrical poems, and it reflects the inner coveting of the author for expression.

In the book “The Hebrew Melodies” Byron makes his ideal love:

“She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” (“She Walks in Beauty” by Lord George Gordon Byron)

An example is his poem “She Walks in Beauty” (1814), which creates a vivid image in which there are harmoniously fused spiritual and physical beauty. Analogies and allegories from the world of nature, which the poet uses to create the image, do not inhibit or dissolve a human being or essence in it, but only emphasize its nobility and beauty: “She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies;” as well as “One shade the more, one ray the less, / Had half impair'd the nameless grace / Which waves in every raven tress, / Or softly lightens o'er her face;”.

The unity of outer and inner beauty is based on the absolute balance of all shades and features that make up the image of the woman. This ideal of perfection and harmony, apparently, is born from the antithesis of the tragic disorder and confusion inherent to the poet himself:

“And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:>

Thus mellow'd to that tender light>

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.” (“She Walks in Beauty” by Lord George Gordon Byron)

Byron dedicated his poem to the woman, for which had a genuine admiration. Lord George Gordon Byron made the accent to every detail in the image of that woman which was his obsession, his love and even his delusion. Every symbol used (“Thus mellow'd to that tender light / Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”), every metaphor introduced into the poetry (“She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies”), every single epithet to describe the beauty (“And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,/ So soft, so calm, yet eloquent”) outline the attitude of Lord George Gordon Byron towards the subject of his dreams.

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